And Then We Are Born

And Then We Are Born

(“You teach me the way of life. In your presence is total celebration. Beautiful things are always in your right hand.” Psalm 16:11)

Lastly I want to say that I am an
archipelago and not a continent,
though the ants that sting my feet might disagree.
(I know you think you’ve found all the
ground you can cover in me,
but there is more to be discovered than
you or I perceive.)

You see my present, and think you know my past.
I am flooded with every act from middle to last.
You see my blunders, I bathe in them daily.
My intentions are more gloomy than you have imagined.

For I am dark jungle and the brightest beach,
barren desert and living reef,
artesian spring and salted sea,
I live in the margins not in the
clarity I wished and believed an
infant life could be.

No one shames the tree for the shadow it casts,
nor blames the sun for not piercing the tree,
the tree and the sun are one.

I hated the middle, the mud, the dark
and assumed the light would change me at last.
But I am tree and sun, dirt and air,
castaway and citizen,
a single soul containing the universe with all its
cold void and searing stars.

Some traveled with me through the overgrowth,
some left when they saw I might be lost,
some welcomed me at the caravansary,
some left provisions and went swimming.
Others wandered with me, overland, between the
boundaries of dusky light. We knew each other better
for our simplicity and loved each other more in the
complexities of soul no one can explain.

We learned new languages and geography;
history was abandoned as we waited for water
and listened to the stories we told. We did not know
if we were younger than the universe, or old.
But the Creator’s light cast shadows in the heat
and brightened the songs we once thought torn by the
unwelcome complications of the moment, the journey,
the untransformed.

And then we are born.